Ted Seides
138 statements across 36 episodes · 40 bullish · 34 bearish · 16 people on the record · first statement Apr 13, 2017 by Ted Seides · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Ted Seides's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Ted Seides, oldest first
Apr 13, 2017 negative
Seides: The subprime short trade psychologically ruined some winning managers
“And one of the things you saw afterwards with some of the people who were in that trade without pointing to any particular manager, is that it almost changed the way they thought. They did something that was perfect, and then they proceeded to search for the n…”
May 2, 2017 neutral
May 2, 2017
May 2, 2017 bearish
May 2, 2017 positive
May 2, 2017 neutral
Seides: Hedge fund-of-funds tied MSCI World over the bet's nine-year period
“If you measured these fund-to-funds against the Morgan Stanley World Index, which is not the right index because it's a hundred percent invested, it's almost a tie. International stocks, so everything but the US, are actually down over this nine-year period.”
May 2, 2017 neutral
May 2, 2017 neutral
Seides: Hedge funds dropped ~24% vs. S&P's 37% decline in 2008
“In 2008, the market, the S&P was down 37%. The hedge funds after Lehman, it was a big difference before and after, but after Lehman had a tough time, but were down, I don't remember the number, maybe it was 24%. This was the group of fund-to-funds.”
May 2, 2017 bearish
May 2, 2017 bearish
May 2, 2017 positive
Seides: Buffett bet collateral held in Berkshire stock outperformed the S&P 500
“And there's one closing point I'd make that's an undercurrent of the bet, which is we all talk about and focus about how great the S&P five hundred's been. But what we actually did with the money, the collateral of the bet, outperformed the S&P 500 by a mile. …”
May 2, 2017 bearish
May 2, 2017
Seides: Bet with Buffett began from a cold letter in 2007
“So I wrote him a letter, like, you know, figure, write an old fashioned guy, an old fashioned letter. I'd never met him before. I made the letter, I think, cutesy enough that I thought he would respond. And I had heard that he was just legendary in how he resp…”
May 22, 2017
Jun 12, 2017 positive
Dec 18, 2017 bearish
Dec 18, 2017 negative
Seides: Launching a Hedge Fund Carries Higher Opportunity Cost Than Decades Ago
“The difference today with 20 or 30 years ago is the opportunity cost is much, much higher. So that, that talented person that might be able to get 20 or fifty million dollars and therefore get three or four or 500,000 dollars of management fee income can get a…”
Dec 18, 2017 neutral
Dec 18, 2017 negative
Seides: Return-focused seeders should avoid managers chosen only for short track records
“An allocator in the seat like protege was, where the investing was really driven by the investment returns on who the seed was, The middle manager who just had a good track record is the least useful. They may be the most useful in terms of short-term being ab…”
Dec 18, 2017
Dec 18, 2017
Dec 18, 2017 negative
Dedicated short-only portfolios suffer structural rebalancing decay in market crashes
“The other challenge is a little bit more subtle, which is managing a short-only portfolio has a real rebalancing issue. And if you just think about the fall of 2008 and early 2009, dedicated short sellers that might have been typically run, call it 80 or 90% s…”
Feb 5, 2018
Duke: Decision-makers must form accountability groups because others spot their biases better
“Other people are actually pretty good at spotting our biases. So in the same way that you sort of naturally recruit people into the process with you when you express things probabilistically, why not do that intentionally and just purposely recruit people into…”
Feb 5, 2018
Duke: Framing decisions as bets transforms dissenting information into helpful calibration
“What a bet does is it shifts your idea of what winning means. So winning is now actually having the most accurate representation in the world. And that really comes through the accountability that this idea of betting is, because when you challenged your daugh…”
Mar 26, 2018 positive
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018
Seides admits his personal net worth is smaller than public assumes
“The public perception of what my
Personal balance sheet might be like is not what it really is, which is a really, at times is a very difficult thing personally when you say, wouldn't it be nice if I just had as much money as everyone else seems to think I hav…”
Mar 26, 2018 neutral
Seides: Wealth amplifies existing personality traits rather than changing them
“Money makes people more so. So the notion is, if you're a greedy person, and you have more money, you're going to be more greedy. If you are a kind person, and you have more money, you are going to express kindness in even better ways.”
May 14, 2018
Nov 12, 2018
Nov 19, 2018
Duke: Decision groups improve judgment by policing mutual biases
“So if we make a pact between the two of us, That you're going to watch my bias, and I'm going to watch your bias, and now we can form kind of a decision group together where we make rules about what the interaction is supposed to be. You can set me straight. I…”
Dec 10, 2018 positive
Dec 10, 2018
Apr 8, 2019 positive
Seides: Frame difficult manager confrontations collaboratively without personal judgment
“What I might have done differently would be to introduce The dynamic that this might be a difficult conversation. This is sort of unexpected. ... Unexpected, difficult, with no judgment about you personally, or your business, or just try to get them on the sam…”
Apr 8, 2019 negative
Apr 8, 2019 negative
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 neutral
Seides: Warren Buffett is refusing all podcast invitations
“Warren is not going to come on the show. I, I've asked him twice. And the second time it was, he really walked me through the why, which was very, very interesting. So he's getting a little on in his years. He's very focused on this time. And what he said was …”
Apr 8, 2019 positive
Apr 8, 2019 negative
Seides: Leaders who share opinions first bias teams and lose diverse input
“Because we know from research that as soon as I tell you my opinion, I am coloring and biasing your opinion of the same issue. And so the leader who starts by expressing their opinion has just lost the ability to get the diversity of opinions of the other peop…”
Jan 27, 2020 negative
Jan 27, 2020 bearish
Jan 27, 2020
Seides: Self-made wealthy individuals often shift toward conservative investing
“You do see people, as they generate a lot of wealth, often get a little bit more conservative. So most people that have substantial amounts of wealth that wasn't inherited made it by taking significant risk. And once they make it, they don't necessarily contin…”
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Seides: Only a few dozen capital pools succeed using the endowment model
“Most of the people in those seats pursuing these strategies all will tell you that there are only a few dozen pools of capital that are properly structured to pursue these and succeed. It requires an army of people, a small army of people, a small army of tale…”
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Seides: Podcasting broadened public perception beyond the Warren Buffett bet
“I assumed that no matter what, the bet and having lost the bet to Warren would be sort of part of my public legacy, and I wasn't gonna be able to do anything about that. I was not expecting that doing a podcast would Broaden, you know, people's at least knowle…”
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Seides: Swensen's edge was defining core investment beliefs and stakeholder communication
“The core of how David approached kind of the investment problem, which is pervasive, is he developed a certain set of beliefs about investing. And then he was incredibly good at communicating those beliefs to his constituents, which is his board, his team, and…”
Jan 27, 2020 bearish
Seides: High passive ownership risks corporate governance by insulating executives
“What is troubling is the ramifications that has on the governance of the underlying companies that will drive the returns. So you could imagine if you have 95% passive investors that corporate executives could do whatever they want because their shareholder ba…”
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Seides: D.E. Shaw raised fees to 3-and-30 to restrain fund asset size
“D E Shaw earlier this year, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think they went from two and a half and 25 to three and 30. And it was a mechanism that they were trying to use so that their clients could self-select. They wanted to restrain their asset s…”
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Seides: Most hedge fund fees have compressed below historic 1.5-and-20 levels
“For a long time, I would say that the industry fee looked like a one and a half percent management fee and a 20% incentive fee. And for most of the participants in the hedge fund industry, the fees are lower than that today and continue to come down.”
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Ted Seides: Index funds are a terrific tool for most investors
“I have always thought that index funds are a terrific tool for most investors. And I say most because most investors do not know why they might be beating the market. And you have this wonderful opportunity to just join the market. And pay next to nothing for …”
Feb 15, 2021 neutral
Mar 22, 2021 neutral
Seides: True 10-year investment horizons do not exist for most allocators
“The long term that we all aspire to be, long term investors, doesn't really exist unless every part of the capital through the governance structure to the individual making the decision is perfectly aligned, and unless you're Dave Swenson and a few other selec…”
Mar 22, 2021
Seides: Baseball analytics preceded investing in adopting a 'quantamental' balance
“Interviewing Ben Ryder, who wrote the book Astro Ball, twice now, but the first time before the Astros blew up, it was like startling to me that what he was describing was the movement into quantitative finance, and that baseball was ahead of investing, and th…”
Mar 22, 2021 negative
Mar 22, 2021
Seides cut shocking off-color comments from Anthony Scaramucci's podcast interview
“Sometimes Anthony can't help himself. And he said one or two things only because it was such close proximity to coming out of the White House. I was afraid that if I'd put that out with those things he said, it might've like been in the news somewhere. They we…”
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 neutral
Ted Seides: Allocators Are Probably Better Off Balancing Growth and Value
“You're probably better off being balanced between the two. Because if you get too far ahead of your skis and you're wrong, if you're right in the long term but you don't survive to the long term, I think as Andy Golden said on one of the shows, finish first, y…”
Mar 22, 2021
Seides: Investment committees must focus on policy, not manager selection
“The question is like, what does good governance mean? And I think that's pretty simple to say, a little bit harder to pull off. So the first is just clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Everybody knows if you're on the committee, you're responsible for …”
Mar 22, 2021 positive
Mar 22, 2021 negative
Seides: Allocators talk too much in manager meetings to look smart
“What you see often in manager, kind of, allocator interactions is that allocators want to be the smartest person in the room and prove themselves. And so they talk too much. You're not going to learn a whole lot about somebody else by talking. You're going to …”
Mar 22, 2021
Seides: Allocators should conduct distinct interviews for each due diligence topic
“Maybe the very first interview, you're just gathering facts, trying to figure out, is this a fit structurally for what we're trying to do? Somewhere down the road, you probably want to do a deep dive on their process. You might want to do a deep dive on indivi…”
Mar 25, 2021 positive
Mar 25, 2021 bullish
Mar 25, 2021 neutral
Seides: Managing capital purely for returns was never fully fulfilling
“Just generating returns, just making money never felt fully fulfilling to me. But at the same time, I love the markets, and I really love investing in managers, and so, so much of what was happening, I felt that really suited me, but there was always something…”
Mar 25, 2021
Seides: Optimal investment committee size is four to six people
“Optimal decision-making units are four to six people. I cannot tell you the research of why that's the case. I just know it is. So you think about your investment committee should not be 12 people. It probably shouldn't be two investment people either. Four to…”
Mar 25, 2021 negative
Seides: The CFA curriculum fails to teach essential CIO management tools
“The first section is called toolkit and it's five tools interviewing decision-making or two of the five, the other three are negotiations, leadership and management. These are all things that CIOs and investment professionals need to be effective in their jobs…”
Mar 25, 2021 negative
Seides: Publicly sharing strategy was heavily discouraged at Yale and Protégé
“The biggest difference is sharing, because when I sat at Protege, or even when I sat at Yale, sharing what you were doing and sharing it publicly certainly was not a part Of your job. In fact, some people would say that is a detriment to your returns, but that…”
Jun 7, 2021 positive
Leaving money on the table generates repeat deals and superior long-term returns
“If I can sell you this for one dollar, yeah, I can sell it to you for one 40 because I have the hammer and I have the leverage, but that'll be the last deal that I ever did with Ted, right? But if I can sell you this for nine bucks, when you know it's worth 10…”
Sep 27, 2021
Sep 27, 2021 bearish
Seides: Immediate push to back new diverse-owned funds is structurally misguided
“A lot of the response that I've seen from the people I talked to is we're going to go invest in a diverse manager, a diverse owned manager and my contention all along is that's incredibly misguided because the structure of the industry today was created based …”
Sep 5, 2022 negative
Sep 5, 2022 bullish
Sep 5, 2022
Sep 5, 2022 neutral
Seides: AI analysis shows allocators focus on risk, managers on upside
“We started actually doing some AI work on assessing the conversations of the podcast to try to see different themes. And one of the things we found is that the allocator community, so the CIOs talk a lot more about risk and the managers talk a lot more about u…”
Sep 5, 2022
Sep 5, 2022 bullish
Seides: Web3 daily applications are a decade away, not two years
“I do think that it's likely that the new wave of technology innovation is happening on blockchains. The applications that we're using every day, the most powerful ones, 20 years from now may well come out of this web three ecosystem. But I think that's a decad…”
Sep 5, 2022 bearish
Seides: Small hedge funds lost their favorable supply and demand dynamics
“When I decided to leave protege, I really no longer believed we could deliver in the way we had in the past.
small hedge funds were at this sort of inflection of feeling like the supply and demand for capital was no, no longer in their favor.”
Sep 5, 2022 negative
Ted Seides: Private equity and venture capital are impractical for retail investors
“Things like venture capital and private equity and real estate investing all require a lot of resources to either find the deals or to find the managers who are conducting those deals globally. Those investment areas, the winners tend to be very plugged in and…”
Sep 5, 2022
Sep 5, 2022 positive
Dec 26, 2022 positive
Dec 26, 2022
Dec 26, 2022
Dec 26, 2022 negative
Jul 10, 2023
Aitken: Fundamental investors account for only 5-10% of listed turnover
“And yet the facts are that if you and I, Ted, decide we're going to buy some listed asset today, well, we're going to be five to 10% of the turnover. Because the way the world works today is that the flow is dominated by the machines, and that's not a criticis…”
Jul 31, 2023
Jul 31, 2023 negative
Jul 31, 2023 negative
Jul 31, 2023 positive
Jul 31, 2023 positive
Seides: Allocators need feedback mechanisms to improve manager interview skills
“So one of the things that I coach the allocators and the Capital Allocators University to try to help them improve is create that feedback mechanism for how are you performing and your team, individuals on your team, in interviewing managers. You need to have …”
Jul 31, 2023
Seides: Public speaking audiences are on the speaker's side and want success
“Which is the audience wants you to succeed. All of these people that could feel scary if you're not accustomed to public speaking, they're actually on your side. Nobody wants to see a complete train wreck or somebody fumbles all over themselves.”
Jul 31, 2023 neutral
Seides: Investors must do independent work despite manager alignment
“You have to do your own work. And whatever that means in a different situation, you can't just take for granted, even with someone who was perfectly aligned. He had so much of his own capital in this name, and he missed something that was totally obvious.”
Jul 31, 2023
Seides: Allocating 5% mental bandwidth to pacing eliminates verbal fillers
“About five percent of my brain is thinking about making sure that I'm spacing out my words so that I don't say like while I'm not doing that. And if you practice it, it's not that anyone will be perfect, but practicing it and saying, okay, I'm not fully presen…”
Jul 31, 2023 negative
Oct 14, 2023 positive
Oct 14, 2023 negative
Oct 14, 2023 positive
Nov 23, 2023
Nov 23, 2023 neutral
Nov 23, 2023
Jan 1, 2024 positive
Housel: Sustaining average returns over long periods beats maximizing single-year returns
“What actually matters in investing is not what the highest returns that you can earn are in any given year. It's what returns that you can sustain for the longest period of time. And I think the dirtiest secret in investing is that average returns sustained fo…”
May 31, 2024 positive
Sep 26, 2024 positive
Moodgal: IADEI comprises 800 global institutions screening minority managers quarterly
“And on the back of that was born IADEI, Institutional Allocators for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which today has 800 institutions across the world that quarterly sifts through minority owned organizations. Minority led organizations in a certain asset cla…”
Dec 30, 2024 neutral
Dec 30, 2024 positive
Dec 30, 2024 bearish
Dec 30, 2024 positive
Seides: Swensen model ignores that business growth improves manager performance
“And while that's pristine, there's a part of that that doesn't consider the necessity of a successful business in generating optimal investment performance. Oftentimes, allocators see a manager, they like getting there early, someone who's great, delivering pe…”
Dec 30, 2024 positive
Dec 30, 2024 neutral
Seides: Allocators fear delayed PE distributions, not 2008-style liquidity crises
“When you talk to allocators, they're not actually worried about liquidity. This is nothing like 2008, but they are wondering when will distributions come back and how will they address continuing to invest in the private markets?”
Mar 10, 2025 positive
O'Leary: Getting managers to reveal concealed truths is 90% of diligence
“I think holding people's feet to the fire on tough stuff, like the conversation around the succession planning, those conversations where this is a safe venue for us to talk about hard things and really having managers understand that, and then feeling empower…”
Sep 8, 2025
Seides: Ultimate decision-makers should speak last in committee discussions
“Ultimate decision maker should speak last. Because if they speak first, everyone wants their bonus, and so everyone's gonna start agreeing, and the person who's not sure because of this one obscure thing that ends up being the biggest risk factor that no one t…”
Sep 8, 2025 neutral
Sep 8, 2025 positive
Seides: Dietrich Foundation allocates 90% to private assets and 30% to China
“Earlier this year, I had Ed Grefenstedt, who's the CIO of the Dietrich Foundation. And I'll just tell you one thing, then you'll say, wait, that's possible. 90% in privates, like half of that's in venture, like as much as 20 or 30% in China.”
Sep 8, 2025 neutral
Sep 8, 2025 positive
Sep 8, 2025 positive
Sep 8, 2025
Seides: Allocators lack feedback loops on their interviewing technique
“I never had a feedback loop. I never came out of a meeting with a manager and said, how did I do? It was always, oh, what do we think of them? Are we going to have another meeting? Or thank God they're in our portfolio, or we got to get out of that manager. Th…”
Oct 6, 2025 positive
Spielman: Six to eight reports are optimal; check-ins need five minutes
“The six to eight is the sweet spot, but let's just even take the 20. I still think that that person can meet with his folks once a week, and it doesn't have to be an hour conversation. It could be Knocking on the door, popping by. Say, Ted, what do you got goi…”
Dec 22, 2025 neutral
Dec 22, 2025 neutral
Seides: Private Equity Has $1.2 Trillion in Dry Powder
“Well, there's tons of dry powder, trillion two of dry powder. You need debt capital, and there's almost an infinite amount of corporate private credit available. You need companies that are willing to transact, and there's tens of thousands of private companie…”
Dec 22, 2025 bearish
Seides: AI Down Rounds Will Trigger Significant Private Market Valuation Compression
“So I will say whether it's next year or the year after the year after, I would be shocked if there isn't a significant compression. Maybe starts with the valuations of private AI companies and significant down rounds, and maybe that has downstream effects beca…”
Dec 22, 2025 neutral
Seides: Zero Institutional LPs Admit Their PE Portfolios Are Below Median
“I've asked at every AGM I've spoken to this year, please raise your hand if you think your private equity portfolio is median or below. And there isn't a single hand that's ever gone up. Everyone playing is playing for the top quartile.”
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Seides: Unlocked Private Market Capital Will Flow Back Into Public Equities
“The biggest impact of that over the next couple of years is that when private markets unlock for liquidity, the first wave of that money from the institutional market is going to go back to the public markets. It's not going to get recycled in the private mark…”
Dec 22, 2025 negative
Seides: GPs Delay Exits and Extend Hold Times to Protect Future Fundraising
“You could say that private equity is frozen because of fear. It's fear on the GP side of, you If they sell, returns aren't what their LPs would have thought. They're afraid they're not going to be able to raise their next fund. So rather than say, we'll just t…”
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Dec 22, 2025 bearish
Jan 5, 2026 positive
Apr 13, 2026 positive
Stutman: Frame feedback as recommendations to drastically reduce employee defensiveness
“What I tell leaders all the time, Ted, is they need to get out of the feedback business and get in the recommendation and suggestion business. They're going to be able to give a lot more feedback a lot more often with a lot less resistance and defensiveness ju…”
Apr 13, 2026
Stutman: Embed feedback inside 'how' questions to completely bypass defensiveness
“A how question, if it's done and carries feedback, actually embeds the feedback inside the question. When I say to you, Ted, how are you going to upgrade the talent on your team? The feedback is that your team talent needs to be upgraded. But I don't say that.…”
May 18, 2026 negative
May 18, 2026 neutral
Ted Seides says David Swensen viewed loyalty in strict black-and-white terms
“He also was someone who, when you were on the team, it was white, and when you were off the team, it was black. He hadn't want me to leave to go to business school, so in those four years, I occupied an unusual gray role.”
Sep 3, 2026 negative
Sep 3, 2026 positive